Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
My not of interest to the list was not a put-down, just meant this is not shared background, not everybody-knows stuff. Note: My exact words were: not necessarily relevant history to others on this list, either. I was NOT saying: therefore shut up about it (even though I'd encouraged you to share your history). I was saying: more please, if you're going to keep taking strong positions and emphasizing how strongly you feel about them. Because you can't rightly expect your version of history to be what others on this list have considered as a relevant telling, me included. All this applies to me as well. I need to publish my version of history too, for context -- and do, though more at my web sites than here. OK, I think that must be crystal clear. Of course you don't have to follow my advice, and of course I'm free, if you don't, to stop trying to understand your posts, or even read them. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Arthur'; edu-sig@python.org Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL office in Switzerland - where the timekeeping action has always been - hushed whisper Wait a minute, isn't Kirby secretly Swiss? Or was that Bill Mahrer (HBO)? click target = http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/urner.html; / Uh, ok, not so secret then. /hushed whisper More ethnographic irrelevancy? Great. ;) (I think, see below) The most accomplished and devoted clocksmith within my frame of reference is an old friend, and high school teacher. He would expose his industrial arts students to some of this craft and his passion for it, until he was closed down and retrained into a craftless and passionless Java teacher. Which I guess is progress to the extent we insist on measuring progress in terms of technological content, and weight technological content by year, such that anything from 2000 and before is multiplied by Zero. Note: From Kirby's follow-up measure to my blowing my cool, I am suspecting that he did not mean to berate me for offering the (irrelevant to the list) information he had asked me to offer. So I accept the probability that there was a misunderstanding involved. But at least we learned the further irrelevant fact of the kind of thing of which I am capable. But certainly not generally in response to criticism of the irrelevancy of something I might post - except should it come from someone who asked me to post it. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Arthur [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- except should it come from someone who asked me to post it. My irrelevancies are almost exclusively self-propelled. So everyone who ever was - except for Kirby, once - is quite safe. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
From Kirby's follow-up measure to my blowing my cool, I am suspecting that he did not mean to berate me for offering the (irrelevant to the list) information he had asked me to offer. So I accept the probability that there was a misunderstanding involved. Exactly right. I was saying: look, your background as former CP indoctrinated or whatever can't possibly be common knowledge to people on this list (we simply mustn't presume this shared context/namespace) and so please, in future, if at all possible, supply ample autobio and fleshing out, especially when asking for moratoria or fatwahs, as we cannot possibly be expected to just absorb such context from the ether, as if every intellectual alive just knows what Marxism is about etc. etc. Forty years ago maybe, but not now. Not even then (a lot of innocent people got caught in the cross-fire and *still* don't know what hit 'em). So what I'm saying is, again: autobio is NOT irrelevant. That's why I've been offering mine, that's why I encourage you to keep offering yours. My not of interest to the list was not a put-down, just meant this is not shared background, not everybody-knows stuff. You need to fill us in. You need to see that as your responsibility, and no one else's. I think you leave too much out, try too hard to be pithy. We can't be expected to track. That's all I was saying. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:21:22 EDT, Arthur writes: -Original Message- From: Laura Creighton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Arthur Cc: 'Laura Creighton'; 'Radenski, Atanas'; 'Chuck Allison'; edu- I think that only people who thrive on playing with their mathematical intuition will love computer science and all higher math. But most women do not work on developing one. But why? Haven't we gone around in a circle. Is it a moral or other obligation of men to ruminate on this matter? Can we (men) move on - until someone gets back to us. And prove that we are liberated men, not believing that all problems are ours to solve? Art This isn't a problem for men to solve as men. It is a problem for educators to solve, as educators. But that shoe fits most people around here ... Laura ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Laura Creighton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This isn't a problem for men to solve as men. It is a problem for educators to solve, as educators. Well - let me be the reactionary, again. With some reference back to David's point about social engineering and its deleterious effect on education. There is a long history of literature on the subject of the inevitable destructiveness of just these kinds of engineering efforts - mostly an outgrowth of the intellectual minority mustering some effort to confront the intellectual majority's pussyfooting on subjects like Marxism. Educators have done enough harm to boys already by trying to solve these problems (in an atmosphere of duress), and more abstract, but real, harm to girls as well. More efforts will bring us more of the same. As a good reactionary, I actually wish we could - for the good of all - roll things back a bit. But will settle for a moratorium. A good, long moratorium. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Arthur [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 10:40 AM To: 'Laura Creighton'; 'Arthur' Well - let me be the reactionary, again. Only because this subject is *so* significant to me, and I understand that I am subverting that seriousness by being the tongue-in-cheek reactionary, let me restate and add some personal frame of reference. The elder sister I refer to, the one perhaps in the history books, has not simply been among the women of her generation who have broken new ground for women in education and in the professions, she has applied her education and devoted a good deal of her professional life to the cause of women, particularly in giving women the ammunition they need to defend themselves as members of the workforce, in various ways, and on various fronts. And while I am not on board with every word of every law, and I recognize that this ammunition, like all ammunition, can be misdirected - I am certainly generally supportive of what she and her colleagues have accomplished. So again, I didn't want it be too easy to dismiss as the tongue-in-cheek reactionary. But First do no harm. Everything we can look to with any objective eye should tell us that it is the boys who are suffering most under the current atmosphere of our schools. And I see that absolutely clearly from my personal frame of reference. My feminist sisters see it absolutely clearly with their own children. And it is largely because the engineers have seen fit to denigrate the things boys gravitate toward, and the ways that they gravitate towards doing it. And that has been done largely in the interests of achieving fairness for girls - of the shallowest kind. By in fact making strengths of the exact weaknesses of women's culture that Laura articulates so well. Hardening those problems, rather than confronting and solving them. All done with the best of intentions, by human beings of various and sundry genders who have no right to expect otherwise - no right to expect that your ape of more than average intelligence would have be equipped to get this effort right. We are achieving shallow fairness at the expense of a deeper pervasive unfairness. Yes, and feminization. But feminization in the sense of what feminists are not supposed to want it to mean. Moratorium, at least until we get our heads on straight. Art With some reference back to David's point about social engineering and its deleterious effect on education. There is a long history of literature on the subject of the inevitable destructiveness of just these kinds of engineering efforts - mostly an outgrowth of the intellectual minority mustering some effort to confront the intellectual majority's pussyfooting on subjects like Marxism. Educators have done enough harm to boys already by trying to solve these problems (in an atmosphere of duress), and more abstract, but real, harm to girls as well. More efforts will bring us more of the same. As a good reactionary, I actually wish we could - for the good of all - roll things back a bit. But will settle for a moratorium. A good, long moratorium. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
But will settle for a moratorium. A good, long moratorium. Art Just trying to get clear what there's a moratorium on. Educators doing something to right an imbalance of some kind? Sounds like we might want to be doing that, not slamming a door shut on. And your objection is something about pussyfooting and Marxism? Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 11:38 AM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' But will settle for a moratorium. A good, long moratorium. Art Just trying to get clear what there's a moratorium on. Educators doing something to right an imbalance of some kind? Sounds like we might want to be doing that, not slamming a door shut on. And your objection is something about pussyfooting and Marxism? Am I incomprehensible to you because I talk over your head, or under it? Do you bother to read what I write? I am quite sure that there are intelligent responses to what I am trying to say. I am also just an ape of more than average intelligence. Your's doesn't qualify as an intelligent response. But you are denigrating, not responding. And - yes - as usual I think I am speaking at a level of substance that deserves more than that. And yes, I am taking the kind of counter position against which it is easy enough to take cheap shots - and sound like the one in the loop. I would appreciate it if you resisted. Or at lest, first, made some effort to indicate you actual read what I wrote with some sensitivity. As a prelude to your denigrating response. But as you have said, you read what I write with a sense of from where it comes. And you have a right to (to be wrong) about that. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
This is part of the chemistry story. it attracts women who say the only important reason for them to become chemists is that 'there were a lot of women in it'. Which is rather hard on those of us who would like to spread the succcess elsewhere. It means that if we could get even moderately successful, we could probably snowball, but the first step seems as hard as ever. Laura Hey Laura, I enjoy your bold pen stroke sketches of a female psyche and find the descriptions quite compelling, even in the presence of so many exceptions, i.e. women who don't fit that mold. That's not the point of stereotypes, and stereotypes have a way of being useful even as they quickly get obsolete (we diss them so strongly because they do, in fact, become highly misleading, as a culture evolves away from them). The movie and music club cultures that knit young people around memepools, have ways of changing the mix pretty significantly over fairly long periods of time. TV audiences of the 1960s would have been shocked at the antics on The Simpsons, but by now these characters treasured members of our human family. Generations fly by, and the dance between the sexes changes in the flow. Some futurists paint this ship-style ethic with males and females in unisex uniforms, the hierarchy just as obviously unisex, and blind to other such superficial differences (skin color, eye shape etc.). That brand of futurism reflects a present that's now past. Been there done that. Now we're more likely to see ourselves surviving in a remote, reality-TV wilderness, more like Indiana Jones than Star Trek, or more like Jacques Cousteau, with lots of high tech (aqua lungs and so forth). No, not neo-colonial. More like the aliens have landed (i.e. a next generation has come to mommy, aka to our shared Spaceship Earth). Happy landings kids. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 11:55 AM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' Cc: edu-sig@python.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL As a boy, I'm looking at a different rebalancing act: CS infuses math with new blood, changing its sex appeal in the process, and pretty much erasing the so-called gender gap -- however at a cost of making what boyz and girlz learn tomorrow, in terms of content-wise distance from what you learned when you and I were little, pretty vast. GPS starting 2nd grade, with earth.google.com. Stellarium. Celestia. You and I picked it up from reading, then looked up and saw light pollution and forgot the constellations. We were ignorant, and then we died. Can't quite make you out, but do suspect that we remain on very different Celestia. In my world, we forgot to give enough attention to what, for example, a Mr. Felix Klein (1849-1925) was trying to tell us. We in fact consistently misread, misunderstand, misrepresent and misapply the potential of the best of the past to inform and map the future. In my program, we correct that mistake - letting the gender chips fall where they may, but strongly suspecting - done correctly (i.e. beautifully) they will fall where they should and to everyone's satisfaction. I have no place for GPS in my program. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
I would appreciate it if you resisted. I *am* resisting. It sounds to me like you want to block important processing among expert educators by raising irrelevant specters, or rather, relevant specters in an irrelevant fashion. It is you who bring in Marxism as a key word, without context, and expect that to mean something to others. You presume a shared namespace. I find that presumptuous on your part. That's why I prefer when you delve into personal autobiography. Then you start to make a little more sense to me. Or at lest, first, made some effort to indicate you actual read what I wrote with some sensitivity. As a prelude to your denigrating response. It's not denigrating. More like: unless you can prove your desire to impose a moratorium is well founded, your wish may be ignored. On the other hand, maybe there's something important here. But you don't do enough to flesh it out (in this first post). You do better later. But if you think a word like Marxism is going to close an argument with me, think again. But as you have said, you read what I write with a sense of from where it comes. And you have a right to (to be wrong) about that. Art Yes, I have a right to be wrong. I also have a right to not include your code in my running version of the source, which is often copied by others, if I think your viewpoint is overly obstructive and/or obnoxious. But for now, I'm paused, waiting to see what your proposed moratorium might look like, whether it would interfere, assist or whatever. I'm still evaluating. Do you have any brand of futurism you could share, some scifi about what tomorrow should/could be like, were your desires met in higher degree? For my part, I do go public with a brand of futurism. I practice what I preach. And I tend to dismiss ideological camps unable to produce such scenery, even in sketch. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
I have no place for GPS in my program. Art That's perfectly fine, and so we compete, counter-recruit. You fill your school, I'll fill mine, and like that. GPS is important when driving a [Google?] bizmo to a point of interest. We train faculty in that skill, starting at a young age. Earth awareness is critical in the new curriculum, and segues to polyhedra, networks, ip protocols, shipping lines. Exercises involve knowing what time it is in Tokyo, when it's midnight in New York (reflexively, like the multiplication table used to be) -- so you don't wake someone asleep, so you don't miss your plane to OSCON or whatever. You and I never grew up with this kind of earth awareness. A kid in my tomorrow will be able point to the moon without hesitation, even when it's between his or her feet. More like airline pilots (which is why more of them will have pilot licenses, percentage-wise, than did those early car-driving kids). Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 1:21 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' Cc: edu-sig@python.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL knowing what time it is in Tokyo, when it's midnight in New York (reflexively, like the multiplication table used to be) -- so you don't wake someone asleep, so you don't miss your plane to OSCON or whatever. What time it is in Tokyo, when it's midnight in New York? Outside the context the concept of the history of our confrontation with time and timekeeping, you are talking about trivialities. When my students have begun to understand something of the hidden depth connected to these questions, as for example as presented interestingly in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps - Empires of Time by Peter Galison 2003 and only then, might I allow a one word answer to the question of what time is it in Tokyo? Do you understand what time it is in Tokyo? According to whom? Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Heh - I should to leave something on the table for my great granddaughter to get to work on. Art This work is too primal to just leave undone for another 100 years. What were we proposing to do in the meantime, just sit back and make money, watch people starve? They'd never forgive us, those grandchildren, rightfully. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 1:49 PM This work is too primal to just leave undone for another 100 years. What were we proposing to do in the meantime, just sit back and make money, watch people starve? They'd never forgive us, those grandchildren, rightfully. The beautiful things that we are actually more than equipped to do now, as I have said, and as you pass over. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
The beautiful things that we are actually more than equipped to do now, as I have said, and as you pass over. Art We're equipped to rescue people from disaster now. There's nothing beautiful in not doing that. I'm not interested in your curriculum at this point. Nuff said. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
My answer to your moral activist concerns, which I like to think I share in my way, is mindfulness. Mindfulness depends on an appreciation of the evolution of things. I can't help but translate this into some Buddhist namespace -- several are familiar to me. The Empires of Time subheading to the Galison's book is somewhat a play on words, but in the most basic sense he means Empire, as in Roman Empire, British Empire. In Fuller's (RBF's) lexicon, some of which I've adopted, per Synergetics Dictionary (EJA), we speak of the East India Company, which his father worked for. Fuller himself drank tea to excess. I'm more inclined towards coffee (plus am also sometimes excessive). Speaking of coffee, I meant to include 'coffee drinkers' in my list of programmer nicknames: gemologists (Ruby), perl divers (duh), snake charmers (double duh), and now Java programmers. There is nothing at all inevitable - or scientific (ask the French revolutionists who tried to influence things otherwise) - about how we have come to express what time it is in Tokyo. What time is it in Tokyo? Have a year or two to discuss it? Art You want this to be poetry or something? Airplanes have to land, computers have to communicate, phone calls have to occur. The details were worked out years ago, and are now basic infrastructure. To me, it sounds like you're saying we shouldn't teach basic infra to 2nd graders, by showing 'em their school via Google Earth. No, we have to wait for some teacher to wax poetic in like 10th grade, where they maybe give it some existentialist spin (all highly irrelevant). I'm not talking about airy fairy stuff, I'm talking basic logistics. Think of Dutch kids learning about dikes. This is why we're not all under water kids. If GPS is off by a second of an arc, a lot of people could die. Remember in Louisiana when that guy on the porch shouted to CBS News that they should turn on the pumps. He was right, and that's what the military was working on (generals got involved). But first the pumps hadda be pumped out by other pumps, pumps that got floated into place by boat. Then Rita hit. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 1:10 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' It is you who bring in Marxism as a key word, without context, and expect that to mean something to others. You presume a shared namespace. I find that presumptuous on your part. That's why I prefer when you delve into personal autobiography. Then you start to make a little more sense to me. Without going into great autobiographical detail - I suspect that I have in fact had more potato pancakes prepared for me by and have spoken at more gravesides of folks who had been members of the Communist Party in its heyday - then most people on the list. So the understanding and respect I developed for the intellectual enemies of who these folks close to me at least at one time were, is not something that came overly lightly to me. And yes I see some relevance between my respect for those thinkers and the rejection of certain kinds of engineering efforts, that include a good deal of the engineering efforts made in the interests of gender fairness. No bogeymen. Just some intellectual honesty. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Just some intellectual honesty. Art Yes, and all highly ethnographic and not necessarily relevant history to others on this list, either. And me? I grew up in Rome, with the Communist Party just another decal, with candidates, rhetoric and so on, along with whatever exotic anarcho-crypto-fascist-christo-maniacal cults or whatever. It'd be like having a Gothic Party in some teen wasteland cross-national namespace of today (lotsa web sites), one that keeps running Batman for president (and sometimes he wins). Election day was always a zoo in Rome. Later I moved to the Philippines. Martial law government, lots of quiet American types yukking it up by the Embassy pool (US marines'd salute our car as we drove onto base, Clark or Subic, in search of cheap scuba, given our high civilian ranking). I do like potato pancakes and eat them with liberal Jewish and Buddhist families sometimes. I also eat falafel, Mexican, and lots of Thai. A bumper sticker around here: Keep Portland Weird. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 2:31 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' In Fuller's (RBF's) lexicon, some of which I've adopted, per Synergetics Dictionary (EJA), we speak of the East India Company Yeah those folks are a big part of the story. It would probably be some other time in Tokyo, as we speak (at least in a manner of speaking) were that history not there. Come on - work it in somewhere to your GPS story ;) Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 3:36 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' Cc: edu-sig@python.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL Just some intellectual honesty. Art Yes, and all highly ethnographic and not necessarily relevant history to others on this list, either. Well you've just earned a fuck you. Fuck you. I never thought it was, but you specifically asked for the autobiographical content. So I gave it to you The content of relevance is intellectual. I can't help that you don't comprehend it. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
I toss it off to the fact that I have not made enough of an effort to
study the man's thought to be in a position to say much, and my definite
impressions - though there - are not been worthy of mention.
Take a clue.
Art
But I'm a walking prickly pear of clues, so if you'd wanted to delve deeply,
I'm pretty much out there, and have been for years.
My OSCON 2005 presentation for starters, heavily promoted on this very list:
includes some EJA bio, plus RBF in a 2 minute video segment (at the event,
in our Portland Convention Center venue, an MPEG played via some Windows
version of Pygame, on my Toshiba A60, hooked to speakers).
I don't suppose everyone else makes the same choices you do.
Here on edu-sig, I'm more about Python than Fuller, though of late our scope
has somewhat broadened to include some twilight zone irrelevancies, plus of
course I've edu-sig.saved('a lot of pro synergetics concentric hierarchy')
polemics over the years.
Kirby
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Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 4:09 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' In Fuller's (RBF's) lexicon, some of which I've adopted, per Synergetics Dictionary (EJA), we speak of the East India Company Yeah those folks are a big part of the story. Correctamundo. Especially in Japan. What it boiled down to is the in the time these shots were getting called the most advanced technology available to allow a decent determination of what was when, which is intimately tied to the question of what is where (longitude measurement, etc.) - was the underwater cabling. The history of the East India Company was the main reason that the Brits laid and controlled the bulk of those cables. So that even the French had in the end to go to through the Brits infrastructure when they wanted to map there own Empire. Which in the end gave the Brits the power to call the shots as to what time it is in Tokyo today. All of which - BTW - is only a sub-thread of the Galison book. Which is more directly about the efforts to apply technology to precision timekeeping and its direct relation to the formation of theoretical physics - most directly the contributions of Poincare and Einstein. Turns out that the fact that Einstein happened to get a day job in a patent office in Switzerland - where the timekeeping action has always been - seems to have been the kind of serendipity that contributes to a Leap Forward. That day job got him to where he got much more directly than it is generally understood. Which doesn't even yet touch on the Poincare thread - which is the heart of the book. Good read. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Speaking of ISEPP, I've got a boat meeting set up with the Wanderers CEO, Don Wardwell (wwwanderers.org). Maybe you should invite Dave and Lloyd to the Wanderers homepage as well: Science would be ruined if it were to withdraw entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are wanderers-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines -- Benoit Mandelbrot Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Thanks Chuck, good info and insights. I think a lot of CS degree paths featured watered down material. In a way that's good for philo majors like me -- easier to compete with the grads of those programs when doing job interviews around getting work with computer giants. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Chuck Allison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 1:12 PM To: Kirby Urner Cc: 'Arthur'; 'David Handy'; 'Laura Creighton'; edu-sig@python.org Subject: Re[2]: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL About Arthur's affiliated comments, having been both affiliated and non, I've found that I personally can make a greater contribution as an affiliated worker (I sensed some cynical disapproval thereof from Arthur). I recently read Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters - which was not the book I was expecting it to be. It was more a book about business, and organization to do business - and less a book about programming. He talks unabashedly from his own frame of reference (good approach ;))- which happens to be the frame of reference of a talented programmer looking to use his talent to put himself beyond the clutches of financial insecurity. He had much to say relevant to a few strains of this discussion (small business vs. large, affiliation vs., non-affiliation, etc.). But as much as I enjoy (and employ) the personal frame of reference approach, the book is also a frustrating read on that account. Kind of like it's a 3 step approach: 1) Become a world class programmer.. Thanks. Not too surprising I lost some focus when it came to the discussion of points 2 and 3. ;) Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Do you know about PyPy? http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/news.html It sounds to me as if you have the sort of upper level students that would appreciate a compiler they can hack. We like students. JIT goes in this week. unashamed product announcement, Laura In a message of Sat, 08 Oct 2005 11:11:37 MDT, Chuck Allison writes: Hello Kirby et al, Here in Utah we have the newly formed Neumont University, which is largely supported by MSFT and IBM. In 2.5 years students get a bachelors in CS. I put it in quotes because, having visited them and heard their spiel and studied their offerings, I believe they are skimping on the liberal arts side (and even the theoretical CS side) of the baccalaureate and churning out recruits for said companies above (the ever-tempting short cut). While their graduates will indeed be effective in some technical workplaces, I think the slanted education will take its toll. As a college professor, I am concerned for people who go that fit-a-mold route. About Arthur's affiliated comments, having been both affiliated and non, I've found that I personally can make a greater contribution as an affiliated worker (I sensed some cynical disapproval thereof from Arthur). That doesn't stop me from publishing, lecturing, and doing many other things on the side, while leveraging the benefits and resources of the affiliation. One can be a team player and an independent thinker simultaneously. I believe I will soon be successful in making Python our introductory CS language (for CS0, though, not CS1). I still use it in upper division courses whenever possible. (It's a delight in an advanced Programming languages course - a natural to illustrate closures, delegation, etc., and as a bridge to functional programming.) -- Best regards, Chuck ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Laura Creighton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 7:01 PM To: Chuck Allison Cc: Arthur; 'Kirby Urner'; 'Laura Creighton'; edu-sig@python.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Re[2]: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL In Sweden we have laws preventing the sort of advertising that I think MSFT is doing in the USA -- targetting children is illegal. But given that you are stuck with it, I would be very interested in seeing if it has an effect in student sex ratios. I promise you that Microsoft is not promoting to children or their parents an idea that creating technology would be of any interest to them. That of course is why we have Microsoft, in fact. And why we should duly appreciate that fact. The *boys* at Microsoft have our best interests in mind. They are the providers. We only need to show our appreciation by consuming appropriately. All will be well. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
As usual, I don't have time to comment on all the intriguing things that have come out of this thread. But gender balance is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about and working on as regards our own program. So I felt compelled to say something. Laura Creighton wrote: Why females shy away from math and science is no big mystery. It is deemed 'not useful' by them. See many posts by Anna Ravenscoft on the subject here in edu.sig archives. These days she is 'Anna Ravenscroft Martelli' having married Alex Martelli. (Hi Anna. cc'd to you so as to not talk behind your back, and in case you want to comment.) I hear researchers say this at conferences, and I read it in the literature about gender balance in computer science, but I still don't understand it. Can you explain why when selecting majors women consider CS as not useful and therefore to be avoided when they seem to have no such qualms about, say, history or English literature? Here in the states, women are also severely underrepresented in natural sciences and engineering, also areas of obvious utility. Speaking specifically to CS, both boys and girls are heavy users of computers now (although girls tend to start a bit later). So why don't girls perceive computing as a useful field of study? I don't think it's because it involves mathematics, because frankly, most entering CS majors (male or female) have no idea that CS involves much mathematics. I can understand this usefulness argument to some extent for mathematics majors, but at our institution (liberal arts school in rural, midwest US), we have little trouble attracting female math majors. On the other hand, it is extremely rare to find a female interested in CS, period. Virtually all of our female majors are recruited when they take our CS1 class as either a Gen Ed. class or a requirement for another major. To my mind, the useful argument is a nonstarter. There must be something else going on. Any ideas on what that is? snipped part about Laura being a mutant But most women are not like this. They want concrete usefulness. Here at Chalmers in Sweden the women students outnumber the men in all the Chemistry departments. Chemistry is presented as concretely useful. As I mentioned above, this is not the case in the US. Chemistry is still one of the fields where women are underrepresented. When I offered a night-course of three weeks at the Chalmers computer society (all chalmers students are automatically members) on compiler design, pypy, and how to hack ... only got 4 takers, and all male. A different 4 week course -- 'how to build a bot to take care of seeing if your favourite websites are announcing the things you want to know about -- NO PREVIOUS PROGRAMMING SKILLS NECESSARY' got me 57 takers, 35 of which were women. This is interesting. But is the real difference here practicality, or is it something else like the web (i.e. communication) or the NO PREVIOUS SKILLS NECESSARY? Women are not programming because they do not see it as Art, Joy, and a worthwhile selfish pleasure. But also because they do not see it as useful. I have no idea why this is a mystery to the educators. They must not speak to many women. I speak to women all the time, and when I ask them why they're not in CS, they tell me it's because they don't like computers. I've never ever had one tell me they didn't find computers or computer progams useful. As to why they don't see the Art and Joy, it's probably because they've never been exposed to it. It seems as if boys like using computers, and many of them, for whatever reason, are motivated to take a peek underneath and end up hooked on programming. Girls are using computers just as much, but don't seem to go that next step and try to see what makes them tick. Why? I don't know. Someone please tell me so that I can get my daughter interested in programming some day. (Not too soon though; I don't think there's a need for any kid to spend much time with a computer before at least Jr. High. But that's another thread entirely...) In Sweden we have laws preventing the sort of advertising that I think MSFT is doing in the USA -- targetting children is illegal. Then how do your kids know what their parents need to buy for them ;-) But given that you are stuck with it, I would be very interested in seeing if it has an effect in student sex ratios. Perhaps that's one good thing that could come out of KPL-type efforts--- getting some girls to see the Art and Joy. Though I'm not holding my breath. --John -- John M. Zelle, Ph.D. Wartburg College Professor of Computer ScienceWaverly, IA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (319) 352-8360 ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Hello Laura, Saturday, October 8, 2005, 5:01:16 PM, you wrote: LC Why females shy away from math and science is no big mystery. It is LC deemed 'not useful' by them. See many posts by Anna Ravenscoft on the LC subject here in edu.sig archives. These days she is 'Anna Ravenscroft LC Martelli' having married Alex Martelli. (Hi Anna. cc'd to you so as LC to not talk behind your back, and in case you want to comment.) I met Anna and Alex at PyCon this year. LC I'm a mutant. I think that mathematical beauty is _the most important LC cool thing_. All things I love share in it, including wine-making and LC gourmet food preparing. The same burning fire I get in me when I get LC a perfect bite of the best food perfectly matched with best suited LC wine -- I get when I get a new mathematical insight. And they feed LC each other. I write new mathematical ideas down on restuarant papers LC because I get them because the food has stimulated me in interesting LC ways. Mentioning sex sounds crude, but my poor lover has had to put LC up with countless versions of the 'Eureka' principle -- I need to leap LC out of bed, not bath, naked screaming that 'I have found it' -- and to LC write it down before it is gone again. Ahem. Well, you are unique :-)! LC But most women are not like this. They want concrete usefulness. LC Here at Chalmers in Sweden the women students outnumber the men in all LC the Chemistry departments. Chemistry is presented as concretely LC useful. When I offered a night-course of three weeks at the Chalmers LC computer society (all chalmers students are automatically members) on LC compiler design, pypy, and how to hack ... only got 4 takers, and all LC male. A different 4 week course -- 'how to build a bot to take care LC of seeing if your favourite websites are announcing the things you LC want to know about -- NO PREVIOUS PROGRAMMING SKILLS NECESSARY' got me LC 57 takers, 35 of which were women. LC Women are not programming because they do not see it as Art, Joy, LC and a worthwhile selfish pleasure. But also because they do not LC see it as useful. I have no idea why this is a mystery to the LC educators. They must not speak to many women. I find this very illuminating. To be frank, I've suspected some of this but we dare not say things like this in public because of the inflamed rhetoric of feminists. We are skewered if we suggest that there is a difference between men and women. Keep the insights coming! -- Best regards, Chuck ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Hello Arthur, Saturday, October 8, 2005, 6:27:41 PM, you wrote: A Not getting it. Beauty is beauty, and is never useful. Why is there a A rejection in the women's culture of this particular form of useless beauty? A But there are 2 important things to reject, I believe: A That women are somehow less capable in this area. I've thought they just weren't interested. A That something has been or is being done to them - by someone or something A that isn't them - to exclude them. This claim has been made, but, like you, I don't buy it. But I have read plenty of research through math society publications that suggests that perhaps there is a genetic difference mathematically. The jury is still out, of course, but the numbers point that way. That's what the Harvard president in trouble, but the numbers are in his favor. It would be nice to figure all this out someday. I have only one female out of three classes I'm teaching this semester. Pretty status quo. -- Best regards, Chuck ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:31:46 CDT, John Zelle writes: As usual, I don't have time to comment on all the intriguing things that have come out of this thread. But gender balance is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about and working on as regards our own program. So I felt compelled to say something. Laura Creighton wrote: Why females shy away from math and science is no big mystery. It is deemed 'not useful' by them. See many posts by Anna Ravenscoft on the subject here in edu.sig archives. These days she is 'Anna Ravenscroft Martelli' having married Alex Martelli. (Hi Anna. cc'd to you so as to not talk behind your back, and in case you want to comment.) I hear researchers say this at conferences, and I read it in the literature about gender balance in computer science, but I still don't understand it. Can you explain why when selecting majors women consider CS as not useful and therefore to be avoided when they seem to have no such qualms about, say, history or English literature? Here in the states, women are also severely underrepresented in natural sciences and engineering, also areas of obvious utility. When we interviewed the chemistry students here at Chalmers, as to why they were 'bucking the trend' -- last years, decades, worth of female students who lead the way seemed to be the answer. I think that your question indicates your problem. It is not that women start with a list of 'everything is worthwhile' and cross things out. Rather, they start with a list of a few things that are worthwhile. Those not on the list are assumed to be worthless. The problem is to get programming (you will never get computer science as I know it on the list, since it is only done for the sheer joy of it, and is mostly unuseful) on the list of _useful applied sciences where women do well_. For some strange and largely not undserstood reason that happened here in Sweden about Chemistry. Lots of us are trying to understand this. Speaking specifically to CS, both boys and girls are heavy users of computers now (although girls tend to start a bit later). So why don't girls perceive computing as a useful field of study? I don't think it's because it involves mathematics, because frankly, most entering CS majors (male or female) have no idea that CS involves much mathematics. This is a new thing in the USA, then, and it has not spread here where 'you have to be good at math' is seen as necessary for a CS major. I can understand this usefulness argument to some extent for mathematics majors, but at our institution (liberal arts school in rural, midwest US), we have little trouble attracting female math majors. On the other hand, it is extremely rare to find a female interested in CS, period. Virtually all of our female majors are recruited when they take our CS1 class as either a Gen Ed. class or a requirement for another major. To my mind, the useful argument is a nonstarter. There must be something else going on. Any ideas on what that is? snipped part about Laura being a mutant But most women are not like this. They want concrete usefulness. Here at Chalmers in Sweden the women students outnumber the men in all the Chemistry departments. Chemistry is presented as concretely useful. As I mentioned above, this is not the case in the US. Chemistry is still one of the fields where women are underrepresented. Yes. But what we see is that chemistry is here perceived as 'being useful' while Computer Science is not. It is around here called -- 'Mental Masturbation' -- though actually something that is plenty ruder and less alliterative. I do not think that you understand the viceral dislike that many women have of girls who do things, selfishly, for no reason beyond that they enjoy them. I think that only girls who have fought this understand it, and for most, the path of 'make sure that what you do is immediately justifiable in terms of benefitting others' makes immediate sense. Most women have mothers who ingrain this overcompensation to prevent selfishness into all girls. But I was raised by my father and my grandfather. When Catholic Girls School was teaching me that I was being Selfish and Wrong, my elders were teaching me that as long as I did not actively hurt anybody, it was OK for me to be selfish. This is a very male thing. So -- math is cool, and dear God I am Good at it, so why not persue it? This is male thinking. For hundreds of thousand of years, the job for all women has been the raising of their own children. Childraising is difficult, and very few women have the natural talents to do this well. Thus the futhering of civilisation required the convincing of women that their best interests involved sitting around doing something they do not particularly enjoy and which they do poorly. There is a two proned attack on this. The first is to tell women that 'raising children takes no skill, or training, only
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:54:14 EDT, Arthur writes: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Zelle I speak to women all the time, and when I ask them why they're not in CS, they tell me it's because they don't like computers. I've never eve r had one tell me they didn't find computers or computer progams useful. Seems to me that the analogies with car culture are too close to ignore . Women drive cars to pretty much the same extent as men but few care much about the operating system. How many megahertz do you got under the hood of that baby? What's your baud? It was a great day for me when I went from 1400 to 2800. Not a joy I could share with my wife. The question is are these phenomenon related by having the same parent class, or is computer culture - for whatever reason - something that subclassed directly from car culture. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig It is about control. Women are trained to be controlled and to shun all activity that gives them more direct control. Indirect control -- manipulating others -- is possibly ok, but all the rest is dangerous selfishness. Laura - who also helped make the fastest MG in Toronto-area proven in our local race track by helping to 'stack' the exhaust system. Designing that was cool. Power is cool. But very unfeminine. ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Sat, 08 Oct 2005 18:25:57 PDT, Radenski, Atanas writes: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Arthur Beauty is beauty, and is never useful. 'Beautiful' is what gives us pleasure. (Things that give us pleasure can be useful at times, perhaps.) I am curious why computers do not seem to give enough pleasure to most women. I do not know. Atanas Part of the answer is that women are trained to not 'over indulge' in pleasures that do not directly benefit other people. But why the message 'fractals are cool' only translates to some women (and men) is a puzzle I will never understand. The notion that all nature shows itself _fractally_ is just too fundamentally way cool ??? Laura ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
But I have read plenty of research through math society publications that suggests that perhaps there is a genetic difference mathematically. The jury is still out, of course, but the numbers point that way. That's what the Harvard president in trouble, but the numbers are in his favor. It would be nice to figure all this out someday. My view is closer to: IF there is a genetic difference of such chasmic proportions as to forever put math on the male side, THEN there'll inevitably by another math that's more female in its operations, i.e. you'll get a parallel technology, not a imbalanced monopoly. That's just speculation, as we're still considered two halves of the one species (but will that change?). I have only one female out of three classes I'm teaching this semester. Pretty status quo. I've taught large roomfuls of women only for years at a time. One of my more pleasant jobs. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Laura Creighton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 9:52 PM To: Radenski, Atanas Cc: Arthur; Laura Creighton; Chuck Allison; edu-sig@python.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Kirby Urner; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL Part of the answer is that women are trained to not 'over indulge' in pleasures that do not directly benefit other people. Yes. And women outperform men in school these days because one is no longer judged by performance on exams - but by projects, i.e. the effort one is willing to extend to please teacher. So the feminists have rearranged the system to better reward a subservient attitude. Not what they were going for, think I. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Arthur [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Laura Creighton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 9:52 PM To: Radenski, Atanas Cc: Arthur; Laura Creighton; Chuck Allison; edu-sig@python.org; So the feminists have rearranged the system to better reward a subservient attitude. Perhaps someone as unaffiliated as myself can suggest that perhaps math and science seem too hard, in that sense. Not intellectually - but the performance criteria are not the one's women prefer. The standards by which one is judged to have or have not absorbed the material are too objective. There is no one to please. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Hello Laura, Saturday, October 8, 2005, 8:53:09 PM, you wrote: LC I think that only people who thrive on playing with their LC mathematical intuition will love computer science and all LC higher math. But most women do not work on developing one. This is complicated nowadays by the fact that computer-related fields have multiplied, and only some of them involve much in the way of mathematical intuition. Core CS is very much a mathematical exercise. We have many students who balk at the mathematical part of our program, and they bail to IS or IT or Multimedia, etc. That's fine - we all should be so lucky to find where we belong - but once again mathematics becomes the crux of the issue. Kinda makes me feel good that I have 3 degrees in math. All those years of geekdom are finally paying off :-). I discovered programming in a FORTRAN in my senior year at college and knew I found my thing. The other two subsequent degrees were mainly because I didn't want to back up and retool in undergraduate CS - but my last degree was in Applied Math with an emphasis in CS. Yet I wonder if the likes of us are becoming very much a minority, in the U.S., at least, since our math skills as a nation are falling dramatically. Knuth alone hath gazed on beauty bare. I think that's what Edna St. Vincent Millay would've written if she wrote that poem today. Few there be that find it, eh? I have an artist relative that thinks I'm a narrow left-brained nerd. When I try to discuss the beauties of design and problem solving and clean code, etc., I get blank stares and condescending disbelief. Sheesh! He thinks he has a monopoly on dealing with beauty. -- Best regards, Chuck ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Part of our problem is that the development of 'education for all' has historically happened in the economic climate where the great need was to convert surplus farm-labour into industrial workers. Thus the sort of things that were considered essential to a 'good education' was the sort of things that may you _employable_. (Before then, a huge number of people didn't have _jobs_, simply a huge amount of work they needed to do. Housewives are in a similar position today.) For better and for worse, this has produced an educational infrastructure which is driven by the demands of the employers on soon-to-become workers. This works fairly poorly when combined with advanced high-technology consumerism. What happens when what your potential employers want most from the soon-to-be workers is 'to not have to employ them at all'? As long as consumers keep spending, that is their only real value. This is decidedly at variance with historical precident, where one's value was as a _producer_, and where consumption merely happened to balance the books, so to speak. (_Lack_ of consumption mattered, in that if you produced something that nobody wanted, you would end up with surplus stock, and the indication that something was terribly wrong with your business model. Or maybe the harvest was extra good this year ) Scarcity was the norm. Forgetting the problems of 'my factory won't scale' and 'my product is so expensive that I have very few potential customers', you could build a working business model based on the idea that you could sell all that you could produce. Thus converting all the farm workers into producers made sense. But with prosperity came an end to scarcity. The first manufacturers ran into it when they discovered that the cost in transportng their good to new customers made their prices uncompetitive. At this point in time, improvements in transportation technology drove the ability of large firms to increase their markets. Current technology is so advanced that you can pick up raw materials from Canada, ship them to South East Asia, make cars out of them, and ship the cars back. It is one big global market now. The attempts to sell in China is the pushing back of the last -- admittedly huge -- frontier. But the upshot of all of this is that scarcity is over. The market in goods and services are saturated with offerings. It doesn't do you any good to make any more, since all you will do is waste money and add to the glut. Indeed, you are better off spending your money in advertising, trying to promote averice, and 'stimulate demand'. And where human beings really shine is at unskilled labour. If you invest heavily in touch screens and bar code readers, you can lower the skills needed for a checkout clerk. But they are cheaper than robots at picking up goods and passing them over the sensors. And it makes sense to pay them, at rates which exceed the value of the service they provide. You just pass on their costs onto the price of the goods. Because what keeps this over-balanced system running at all is amount of circulation that the money does. Impoverishing the check out clerks to the point where they can no longer function as consumers does not serve the interests of the market as a whole. But this means that the whole 'what is the purpose of education' question is in serious need of revision. It used to be that preparing people for productive lives was enough. These days a productive life may not be what is wanted. Perhaps a meaningful one would be a better goal to strive for. Laura ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
I find Laura's analysis of social and educational trends to be insightful and accurate, but it doesn't go quite far enough in exploring the question what is the purpose of education in today's society? I find this to be on-topic, as it gets at the root of why I wrote a programming textbook for teenage youth, instead of all the other things I could have done with my spare time. I'll only speak for U.S. society as that is what I know; all others apply whatever fits. In addition to the trend of mindless consumerism that Laura described so well, there have been two additional trends contributing to changes in education: the weakening of family (parental) influence and the growing role of schools as the tool of social engineering. The family: Since the early 1900s women have been given the additional role of working jobs outside the home as well everything they do inside the home. Public schools now assume the role of babysitter and caregiver, at the expense of education. Also there is a growing trend of children being raised without fathers; the resulting social and behavioral problems of children are an additional burden on schools, further hindering education. Social engineering: Everyone who wants to change the world starts by trying to get control of the public schools so as to influence young minds in their direction. I have noticed even on this list many wanting to get Python/whatever into the official curriculum; it seems so much easier to get one small group of government officials to push your agenda than to pursuade parents and teachers. Unfortunately, the public schools then become the battleground of ideologies, in the same way that government-run media becomes the first target of any would-be revolutionary junta. Politics rules the schools, and education suffers. With all of this going on, it is a wonder that anyone learns anything useful in school. Indeed, I have memories even from my elementary school days of feeling that my time was being wasted, that I could be learning a lot more and a lot faster, and that I was just being babysat. So where do I fit in here? I'm trying to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I don't have grandiose ideas about changing the course of world events, but I think each one of us can change the lives of individuals around us. I was greatly benefited by mentoring from engineers as a teenager. I'm just trying to give back, by trying to give my own children and others the same opportunities that I had. We on this list are mostly self-taught, independent-minded people. We believe that people *can* rise above mindless consumerism, that they can do something significant. I believe that young people (and all people) are capable of doing a lot more with their minds than what they currently do; that's why I believe that they can learn, among other things, programming with Python. David H. On Fri, Oct 07, 2005 at 03:26:16PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: Part of our problem is that the development of 'education for all' has historically happened in the economic climate where the great need was to convert surplus farm-labour into industrial workers. Thus the sort of things that were considered essential to a 'good education' was the sort of things that may you _employable_. (Before then, a huge number of people didn't have _jobs_, simply a huge amount of work they needed to do. Housewives are in a similar position today.) For better and for worse, this has produced an educational infrastructure which is driven by the demands of the employers on soon-to-become workers. This works fairly poorly when combined with advanced high-technology consumerism. What happens when what your potential employers want most from the soon-to-be workers is 'to not have to employ them at all'? As long as consumers keep spending, that is their only real value. This is decidedly at variance with historical precident, where one's value was as a _producer_, and where consumption merely happened to balance the books, so to speak. (_Lack_ of consumption mattered, in that if you produced something that nobody wanted, you would end up with surplus stock, and the indication that something was terribly wrong with your business model. Or maybe the harvest was extra good this year ) Scarcity was the norm. Forgetting the problems of 'my factory won't scale' and 'my product is so expensive that I have very few potential customers', you could build a working business model based on the idea that you could sell all that you could produce. Thus converting all the farm workers into producers made sense. But with prosperity came an end to scarcity. The first manufacturers ran into it when they discovered that the cost in transportng their good to new customers made their prices uncompetitive. At this point in time, improvements in transportation technology drove the ability of large firms to increase their markets. Current technology is so
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Maybe you are trying too hard. In my mind, I am only stating the obvious. But you *always* seem to think you're stating the obvious. That's probably why it's so hard to understand you. And wondering why it seems to have become acceptable and common to ignore it. Maybe you are looking for more than the obvious. Maybe, maybe... I'd be concerned if just one or two big companies felt they could hijack and control our curriculum, but having thousands upon millions of competing firms hawking their education-relevance doesn't so far bother me. Are there thousands upon millions of firms in a position to compete with Microsoft, Disney and IBM? Certainly. Because these stock market ticker decals you mention have a way of going up and down in an ocean of others, which also go up and down. In education, being a really small company is what's ultra cool. Because your students think they might want to be private, independent entrepreneurs like you someday. More fundamentally, when was it that we decided that the kind of market forces which work to bring us ketchup, work to bring us education. The U.S. - perhaps the most free-market force ever - had, until the technological disruption, understood the importance of making one very fundamental exception to the general rule that the markets rule - and that has been in education. Do you want to cite some sources here? IBM is not in the ketchup business. It has committed to supporting the Linux kernel, which got SCO all excited because surely ownership of the Unix trademark counts for something (unless that's Novell's). But no, it's hours of original man hour that counts, and geeks have their memories, their lore, their admiration structures. They know the Linux of today is no cheap rip off of some ancient Bell Labs source code (which was actually pretty cool, but that didn't rub off on SCO). In adding to the kernel, IBM is acting in an educational capacity as well. It's a two way street however: it was an eye-opener for IBM lifers to get it about open source culture. The point of all this smalltalk: where've you been Arthur? We who bring you ketchup bring you all that engineering you pay for and enjoy. Your car, your skyscrapers, your computer. Since when aren't we in the education business? We taught you all you know. Bucky had a name for us: the Grunch. And I think that is largely because it has been understood that there has to be decisions as to what education *is* before it - education - can be accomplished. And it has been understood that it would be irresponsible to let the markets *define* education. That wisdom is in grave jeopardy. As we see, the market defines education as - what it can deliver. Perhaps it's not. Art But a lot of those IBM lifers and open source snake charmers, perl divers, gemologists and so on, went to schools to learn CS, and still recognize names like Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech... and so on. Behind the big name companies are the big name schools, and cool little ones, less well known, but with dynamite reputations among disciplined insiders. Are these the institutions you think are being usurped by the free market? But they're still players too, and usually get major influence over alumni, well before the employers do. I don't think Princeton feels eclipsed by any market force -- not even Microsoft. I think IBM and Microsoft and any number of education-minded firms, should rev their engines as much as they like in the we're helping kids learn marketing department. Then back up those claims by delivering the goods or take your hit on the big board. It's not like the universities will thereby become slaves to corporate masters, nor even that government agencies will bow out of providing training. Private individuals have tremendous impact as well, acting as authors, creative geniuses. Just look at Harry Potter. Bugs Bunny did more to educate America than most. He had a few people behind him, not millions, yet our media culture has indeed millions of these powerful stars (consider cartoon figures alone, not forgetting Pokeman). So no, I'm not worried that IBM will eclipse the vast forest of other trees that is our Education Planet. Nor do I have any problem with IBM standing strong and tall for a long while, the way trees tend to do. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
From: Laura Creighton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 9:26 AM To: Arthur Cc: edu-sig@python.org Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL Part of our problem is that the development of 'education for all' has historically happened in the economic climate where the great need was to convert surplus farm-labour into industrial workers. I don't know, Laura. You paint a coherent picture. But one considerably more clinical than anything I can relate to from my own frame of reference. And in that sense cynical. In these kinds of discussions I find it difficult and unwise to move outside my own frame of reference - what I know first hand. As a historian or economist I have nothing to contribute. As an observer - and a decent one, I think - perhaps I do. Some good ol' (perhaps unexpected) flag waving: I am one generation away from your not wanted here, nothing but the shirts on our backs, arrival here through Ellis Island. From there it's been right out the civic books, the ones we are supposed to be too sophisticated and cynical to take seriously. Opportunity. Reward for hard work. Recognition for merit. No limits. None. My older sister has fun from time to time introducing me to people you read about in history books, or will. She might be one herself. And in the middle of this - and essential to it - has been free public education, with enough high-minded people contributing enough high-minded effort to move my friends and family along in no particularly direction beyond that which we have had the opportunity to chart for ourselves. *That* is why I get emotional at threats to it - perceived or real. Art Thus the sort of things that were considered essential to a 'good education' was the sort of things that may you _employable_. (Before then, a huge number of people didn't have _jobs_, simply a huge amount of work they needed to do. Housewives are in a similar position today.) For better and for worse, this has produced an educational infrastructure which is driven by the demands of the employers on soon-to-become workers. This works fairly poorly when combined with advanced high-technology consumerism. What happens when what your potential employers want most from the soon-to-be workers is 'to not have to employ them at all'? As long as consumers keep spending, that is their only real value. This is decidedly at variance with historical precident, where one's value was as a _producer_, and where consumption merely happened to balance the books, so to speak. (_Lack_ of consumption mattered, in that if you produced something that nobody wanted, you would end up with surplus stock, and the indication that something was terribly wrong with your business model. Or maybe the harvest was extra good this year ) Scarcity was the norm. Forgetting the problems of 'my factory won't scale' and 'my product is so expensive that I have very few potential customers', you could build a working business model based on the idea that you could sell all that you could produce. Thus converting all the farm workers into producers made sense. But with prosperity came an end to scarcity. The first manufacturers ran into it when they discovered that the cost in transportng their good to new customers made their prices uncompetitive. At this point in time, improvements in transportation technology drove the ability of large firms to increase their markets. Current technology is so advanced that you can pick up raw materials from Canada, ship them to South East Asia, make cars out of them, and ship the cars back. It is one big global market now. The attempts to sell in China is the pushing back of the last -- admittedly huge -- frontier. But the upshot of all of this is that scarcity is over. The market in goods and services are saturated with offerings. It doesn't do you any good to make any more, since all you will do is waste money and add to the glut. Indeed, you are better off spending your money in advertising, trying to promote averice, and 'stimulate demand'. And where human beings really shine is at unskilled labour. If you invest heavily in touch screens and bar code readers, you can lower the skills needed for a checkout clerk. But they are cheaper than robots at picking up goods and passing them over the sensors. And it makes sense to pay them, at rates which exceed the value of the service they provide. You just pass on their costs onto the price of the goods. Because what keeps this over-balanced system running at all is amount of circulation that the money does. Impoverishing the check out clerks to the point where they can no longer function as consumers does not serve the interests of the market as a whole. But this means that the whole 'what is the purpose of education' question is in serious need of revision. It used to be that preparing people for productive lives was enough
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:52:09 PDT, Kirby Urner writes: snip In education, being a really small company is what's ultra cool. Because your students think they might want to be private, independent entrepreneurs like you someday. This might be a better model for a general education -- instead of training people to be factory workers, we might try training them to be small business owners and entrepreneurs. It would certainly be an interesting way to build a curriculum. Laura ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:52:09 PDT, Kirby Urner writes: snip In education, being a really small company is what's ultra cool. Because your students think they might want to be private, independent entrepreneurs like you someday. This might be a better model for a general education -- instead of training people to be factory workers, we might try training them to be small business owners and entrepreneurs. It would certainly be an interesting way to build a curriculum. Laura Yes. Here in Portland we have a new charter school working through the bureaucracy, trying to set up on just this model: a high school that turns out entrepreneurs, ready for college, but also ready to go into business (maybe in part to pay for college). Koreducators.org is the org behind it. I testified at the hearing, have been invited to do so again. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Laura Creighton To: Kirby Urner In a message of Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:52:09 PDT, Kirby Urner writes: snip In education, being a really small company is what's ultra cool. Because your students think they might want to be private, independent entrepreneurs like you someday. This might be a better model for a general education -- instead of training people to be factory workers, we might try training them to be small business owners and entrepreneurs. It would certainly be an interesting way to build a curriculum. That *is* the education we got - or what many I know were able to make of it. Thinking about it - I am the only one in my immediate family, for 3 generations, that has ever drawn a paycheck for an extended period from a profit making organization. Either they have run their own small businesses or worked for non-profits - religious or secular. And only my grandmothers *didn't* work - for money. I eventually got out of the affiliated life. And devoting some energy to learning Python was indirectly connected to getting me out. The other Python connection that comes to mind: I happen to know that Guido's old boss at CNRI was out of the same free City College that was my father. I remember that because I had noticed it on his bio and used it as a schmooze point when I had written to him as part of the campaign to do what needed to get done to have JPython freed up when Guido left there. A free City College that produced more than its fair share of Laureate level scientists. Though that was certainly not my Dad's crowd - his being more the jock/mid-brow/prepare me for small business crowd. For which that college provided an enormously effective curriculum. Which is the kind of fact *within* my frame of reference that conspires to make me more the reactionary than the visionary. Why is it so important to not look more admiringly at the past, in mapping the future? Beyond - of course - the fact that suggesting such tends to make one sound like a dolt. I have reached the blissful state of non-affiliation. And can afford not to care that he sounds like a dolt. The affiliated world more respects the visionary, who knows we have had it all wrong for all time. We need new paradigms, of course. We buy into to his program - and in three month he has skipped town. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: David Handy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 12:10 PM To: Laura Creighton Cc: Arthur; edu-sig@python.org Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL Unfortunately, the public schools then become the battleground of ideologies, in the same way that government-run media becomes the first target of any would-be revolutionary junta. Politics rules the schools, and education suffers. I understand the point, but think that stating it the way that you do implies the possibility of a better alternative. I myself am a reformed school voucher, get the government off our back kind of guy. Personal frame of reference - My youngest first cousin - the product of the identical public schools as myself - ends up in an Iowa city because of her husband's university affiliation, spends 2 years as a desperately out-of-place New Yorker and 2 years later wins the election as head of the city's School Board, with no particular agenda beyond - let's make things work the best we can within the limits of available resources and accommodating diverse sensibilities on topics of sensitivity as best we can. Its legit. And I guess that if Microsoft wants to undertake a campaign to suggest that their business agenda and the realization of my son's potential are cosmically related, I should, since I don't particularly admire the organization welcome their right to spend good money to make themselves LOOK RIDICULOUS. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Just a footnote to signal Arthur's concerns were both timely and topical. Grunch was indeed moving to shake things up in the education sector. And in PDX news of the day: OMSI was partnering with television to make cartoon production a featured exhibit (and implicitly a kid-friendly recruiting exhibit -- the sciences want people too, and deserve good ones). Kirby Abbreviations: OMSI = Oregon Museum of Science and Industry; PDX = Portland, OR; Grunch = GRUNCH as in Gross Universal Cash Heist as in 'Grunch of Giants' a book by RBF; OR = Oregon; RBF = R. Buckminster Fuller, R = Richard. === NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF STATE SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS COALITIONS News Brief #3285 Category: Business Role in Education TITLE: Companies Unveil Projects to Improve Math, Science Learning Two major corporations are investing millions of dollars in programs intended to improve math and science learning. The General Electric Foundation will distribute $100 million in grants over the next five years to raise math and science scores in up to five school districts. The Jefferson County, Kentucky school district is the first to receive a $25-million grant. The district plans to use the money for a new districtwide curriculum, additional professional development, and community engagement efforts. The IBM International Foundation will pay college tuition costs for up to 100 employees who want to train as math and science teachers. In order to participate in the Transition to Teaching program, employees will have to have a bachelor's degree in math or science (or a higher degree in a related field), some teaching experience, and at least 10 years of employment at IBM. The U.S. Department of Labor has predicted a 51-percent increase in jobs related to science, engineering and technology between 1998 and 2008. More than a quarter-million secondary math and science teachers will be needed by the 2008-09 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. SOURCE: Education Week, 28 September 2005 (p. 06) WEBSITE: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/09/28/05ibm.h25.html The NASSMC Briefing Service (NBS) is supported in part by the International Technology Education Association and Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education. Briefs reflect only the opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the source articles. Click http://nbs.nassmc.org to SUBSCRIBE, COMMENT, or FIND archived NBS briefs. Click http://www.nassmc.org for information about NASSMC. Permission is granted to re-distribute NBS briefs in unmodified form, including header and footer. ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
And I guess that if Microsoft wants to undertake a campaign to suggest that their business agenda and the realization of my son's potential are cosmically related, I should, since I don't particularly admire the organization welcome their right to spend good money to make themselves LOOK RIDICULOUS. Art Microsoft already has a track record. KPL is not the first move in any chess game. It's like the 45th or 46th. Look at the 'Magic School Bus' series of CD ROM titles, the encyclopedias. Yes, it's less involved with direct teaching of CS and job-related skills, but Ms. Frizzle is a recruiter nonetheless, for a way of life, an attitude towards science (embrace it, get messy). For older people, there's Microsoft University and MCSE. I'm not extolling, not trying to hype MSFT or IBM, just pointing out the obvious: given a big computer company and a huge target market of people wanting to someday be desirable as coworkers in Silicon Valley, Redmond, wherever, it's not surprising that a relationship develops. We see the same phenomenon around Google, and its sometimes clever recruiting campaigns. This design pattern is not inherently ridiculous, but can become so, especially if it's a circus recruiting for clowns. In the Middle Ages, and Renaissance, we had these guilds, offering apprenticeships, and doing obvious work in the community (blacksmiths, artisans, moneychangers and what have you). Today, kids carry laptops like musical instruments and want to learn to play them. Is school teaching this kind of music? A little, some more than others. And home internet is great. To me it's not surprising when young talents start dreaming of what they could learn if allowed to wander the halls of a computer giant -- like little Bachs yearning to hear real organ music. I realize this makes corporations sound sort of like religions in their outreaching for new lifers. And it's true. Some companies are really cultures, sometimes global in scope. They enter the public school system and form push/pull relationships with other clients of that system, setting up interesting cross-currents. That's partly why I think public school stands up well over time, perhaps best of all in urban settings. Too many of the private academies over-protect their bumpkins, in the name of some purist ideology, usually as professed by key faculty -- and so they miss a lot of what goes on in the big outside world. Life goes on without 'em. Public schools tend to be more like Grand Central, especially in a state with a big city like yours, the Empire State (not called that for nuthin'). Cosmopolis, Gotham, whatever. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 7:01 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'David Handy'; 'Laura Creighton' Cc: edu-sig@python.org Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL And I guess that if Microsoft wants to undertake a campaign to suggest that their business agenda and the realization of my son's potential are cosmically related, I should, since I don't particularly admire the organization welcome their right to spend good money to make themselves LOOK RIDICULOUS. Art Microsoft already has a track record. FWIW, I am more referencing - and what more sets me off - is their recent advertising campaigns. Especially the one I see constantly with kids in it. Which are substanceless and insulting (I get insulted easily) mind games - kids doing stuff, musical notes floating in mid-air and some voice over about Microsoft's mission to realize our potential. If you have something to say, say it. What's on sale this week at ShopRite. *That's* advertising Stop playing with minds. DAMN IT! Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 6:26 PM To: 'Arthur'; 'Laura Creighton' NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF STATE SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS COALITIONS News Brief #3285 Category: Business Role in Education TITLE: Companies Unveil Projects to Improve Math, Science Learning Two major corporations are investing millions of dollars in programs intended to improve math and science learning. The General Electric Foundation will distribute $100 million in grants over the next five years to raise math and science scores in up to five school districts. Maybe the GE Foundation is a legitimate foundation doing legitimate foundation work. Great the ways those things happen. Henry Ford was a dangerous anti-Semite. He assured his right to free speech by buying a newspaper just for that purpose. God bless him. The Ford Foundation does consistently interesting things. But is the GE Foundation contributing to gender unfairness by directing its largess toward math and science curriculum ;) Perhaps the fact that we will apparently have what I think is our 1st mathematician on the Supreme Court (undergraduate degree of Miers) who is also our second women on the Supreme Court will play some small part in muting that nonsense. Back to David's point. There is no denying that there is politics alive in the public schools hurting education. As a damn good for example would be the notion that math and science, according to some vocal segment, needing to be de-emphasized in the interest of gender fairness. I have heard that in PythonLand as well. Arghhh. Certainly I would not be in a position to be the kind of administrator willing to work with and within *everybody's* sensitivities. Again, personal frame of reference: I have a sister who can out think me as a mathematician while whistling Dixie. Art The Jefferson County, Kentucky school district is the first to receive a $25-million grant. The district plans to use the money for a new districtwide curriculum, additional professional development, and community engagement efforts. The IBM International Foundation will pay college tuition costs for up to 100 employees who want to train as math and science teachers. In order to participate in the Transition to Teaching program, employees will have to have a bachelor's degree in math or science (or a higher degree in a related field), some teaching experience, and at least 10 years of employment at IBM. The U.S. Department of Labor has predicted a 51-percent increase in jobs related to science, engineering and technology between 1998 and 2008. More than a quarter-million secondary math and science teachers will be needed by the 2008-09 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. SOURCE: Education Week, 28 September 2005 (p. 06) WEBSITE: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/09/28/05ibm.h25.html The NASSMC Briefing Service (NBS) is supported in part by the International Technology Education Association and Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education. Briefs reflect only the opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the source articles. Click http://nbs.nassmc.org to SUBSCRIBE, COMMENT, or FIND archived NBS briefs. Click http://www.nassmc.org for information about NASSMC. Permission is granted to re-distribute NBS briefs in unmodified form, including header and footer. ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:edu-sig- To: 'David Handy'; 'Guido van Rossum' Cc: edu-sig@python.org Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL A company like Microsoft would be ashamed - based on more traditional notions - of publicly promoting a position that the realization of the potential of our children is part of their mission. I think I understated my position, a bit - in an effort to sound reasonable. One should not expect a large corporation to have an emotion like shame - that's clearly a form a anthropomorphism. One should expect such an enterprise to act in a strategically sound manner. And one might expect that it would be strategically unsound for an organization like Microsoft or Disney or IBM or etc, and etc. to attempt to promote themselves as having an altruistically based concern about learning and education. Because it might well look ridiculous - and as the movie producer in The Godfather says - a man in my position can not afford to be made to look ridiculous. One would expect the most potent fire to come from the educational community, the academic community. But groundwork has been laid. It seems to me that the Microsofts and Disneys and etc. and etc. go forward on these issues with some confidence that the fire coming from those communities will be muted = at best. By understanding the current dynamics - and survival modes - in those communities. Yuck - its ugly. Art ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Hi Arthur -- I really do try to understand your concerns about businesses touting their efforts in the education arena, and how much that concerns you. For me it's more about recruiting i.e. for Microsoft to keep a new generation of talent working in Redmond, it needs to have appeal as an employer, plus needs kids growing up to know something of the Microsoft way and lore. Windows, X-Box and such. If all home schoolers use are Linux and OS X, and same for a generous pie slice of school computer labs, that's maybe not so good, in terms of attracting future talented, fun friendly coworkers. But Microsoft is not so narrow as to only care about Windows or Office or SQL Server. The .NET technology, which we've been discussing in this thread, is a promising platform for Python, and .NET has a footprint in Linux, in the form of Mono. The technology is, once again, cross platform, and that has a lot of appeal (I can even run Mono on Windows -- have it on my Toshiba A60 WinXP laptop in fact, left over from OSCON 2005). Having lots of options is generally good for client businesses such as mine. We don't like getting locked in to pricing structures, not Microsoft's, not anyone's. Open source often looks a lot less predatory to small businesses, even if harder to grok. The programmer you hire is surviving on the basis of skills, not secret access to back door source code. The code is in the open. Kung fu is on merit, not unfair advantage. Python, for its part, tends to go cross-platform because of its VM architecture. Like Java, it's designed to leave interpretation of the low level byte codes to something native, written in something fast. C, Java and C#/CIL have been the VM source languages so far -- at least those are the ones I know a little about (I'm not so sure what's in that Nokia cell phone). I'd be concerned if just one or two big companies felt they could hijack and control our curriculum, but having thousands upon millions of competing firms hawking their education-relevance doesn't so far bother me. Free speech and all that. If you want to position as a friendly-to-kids, yet commercially minded education company, go right ahead. There's nothing sleazy about that in pure principle (you're just recruiting coworkers), and sure, there're lots of opportunities to mess up. Conclusion: there's no promise you'll succeed, but you do have the right to try, is my attitude. Kirby ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
Microsoft's Coding 4 Fun website referenced below is ostensibly intended to boost hobby coding on the MS platform. But my understanding is that Microsoft has one of those we own you, body and soul, and everything you create is owned by us employee contracts. So you can't code for fun and release the code if you are a Microsoft employee, unless you can somehow get through the MS legal department. Therefore KPL was not developed by Microsoft employees. And it doesn't appear to be open source, either. (No source code available, and I couldn't find any explicit license, other than a statement that it was freeware.) David H On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 02:13:58PM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote: Has anyone looked at this yet? http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/ http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/story/0,10801,105100,00.html -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- David Handy Computer Programming is Fun! Beginning Computer Programming with Python http://www.handysoftware.com/cpif/ ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
